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On On the Heights Of Despair

Glenn Mason-Riseborough (13/5/1998)

 

1.0 Introduction

Everything is possible and yet nothing is.  All is permitted and yet again, nothing.  No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other.  It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, ... whether you cry or remain silent.  There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none.  Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid.  There is nothing worth more than something else, nor any idea better than another.  Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy? ... Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness.  Mix everything up. ... All gain is a loss, and all loss is a gain.  Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? [emphasis added] (Cioran, 1992, p. 116)

 

With this in mind, how do you even start to discuss any ‘system’ that incorporates such illusive and contradictory aspects, as Cioran stated in the quote above?  How can we extract anything meaningful from the text of an author who questions the meaningfulness of everything?  According to Cioran, ‘those who write under the spell of inspiration ... do not concern themselves with unity or systems’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 39).  Therefore, should we simply discount Cioran’s writings as contradictory, inconsistent and confused, to be written off as meaningless verbiage?  He admitted in an interview that for him writing was a form of therapy (Zarifopol-Johnston, introduction to Cioran, 1992).  Are his works simply the ravings of a madman striving to come to terms with his demons?  On the Heights of Despair was written at a time when Cioran was suffering from insomnia.  Its poetic and lyrical prose speaks of great personal despair and emotion, but can we read anything more into it, and do we need to?  In this essay I will argue yes to both questions.  Not only is it possible to find a consistent message, but it can also help us come to terms with our own demons.  Cioran’s demons are also our demons.  We suppress our demons with life.  Cioran rips life aside to expose to us the heights of despair in all of us.

Throughout the book On the Heights of Despair, Cioran returns time and again to certain themes and ideas.  One of the more prominently recurring themes is that of surrendering to the subjective passion of life.  In this essay, I will examine this idea more closely.  Can this idea be reconciled with Cioran’s idea of meaninglessness?  If everything is meaningless, why delude ourselves with the importance of our own feelings and emotions?  If everything is meaningless, why not just die?

 

2.0 Meaninglessness

How important can it be that I suffer and think? … Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history – greater than the fall of empires – I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance.  I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; [emphasis added] … This world is not worth a sacrifice in the name of an idea or belief.  … Let history crumble into dust.  Why should I bother?  Let death appear in a ridiculous light; suffering, limited and unrevealing; enthusiasm, impure; life, rational; life’s dialectics, logical rather than demonic; despair, minor and partial; eternity, just a word; the experience of nothingness, an illusion; fatality, a joke! (Cioran, 1992, pp 33, 34)

 

In his commentary on Cioran, William Kluback (Kluback & Finkenthal, 1997) believes we should take Cioran’s words seriously.  He suggests that even when the world has no meaning, we can still have our own garden to play in.  I agree, as long as we realise that no one else will see our garden – to them it is a sewer or desert, an ocean or a tower.

One of Cioran’s most basic premises throughout On the Heights of Despair is the objective meaninglessness of everything.  When we step back, when we push the trees aside to view the forest, we are confronted with the valuelessness of the trees.  We step back even further and find the forest without significance.  So too is the country, the earth, the solar system, and the galaxy.  This universe is so vast that we are smaller than a grain of sand.  Our greatest problems dissolve into nothingness and us along with them.  We are simply the playthings of the gods, yet the gods do not even deem us worthy of their play.  ‘Man has never found, nor will he ever find, any answers.  Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 107).  Life is all we have and yet it is nothing.

The physical evidence of this theory is hard to refute.  While in the past some people believed the earth to be the centre of the universe, current scientific evidence shows us just how large the universe is.  But is physical size the only criterion we have to use?  Many people believe that spiritually we have meaning.  We were created for a purpose that transcends physical size.  It may be argued that the fact that we can step back and objectify gives us worth.  Perhaps we could say that our spirit has a significant metaphysical size. The God who created the universe knows us personally and we can call him friend.  Who is right – who knows?  Physically we are nothing, but do we matter spiritually?  It is argued that the fact that we do not know about our spirit invalidates any claim as to its worth.  It is pointless discussing the value of something we know nothing about. Cioran understood this and renounced the spirit as well.  Perhaps this dilemma can only be solved mystically, and as we all know, mystics do not worry themselves about logical proofs.

However, just because individuals have not achieved cosmic significance does not mean that they cannot.  A quick read through any history book will show us examples of individuals who have dragged themselves out of the masses and into significance.  It is true that on a cosmic level their achievements are nothing, but at a relative level they have worth.  If the universe is finite in any form, then it is in the realms of possibility for humanity and humans to make a significant cosmic difference.  I have the potential to have meaning.  But, on the other hand, if the universe is infinitely infinite, whatever I do will be doomed to futility.

As a consequence of objective meaninglessness, Cioran believes that we are justified in any action we may take.  ‘I am one of the billions dragging himself across the earth’s surface.  One, and no more.  This banality justifies any conclusion, any behaviour or action: debauchery, chastity, suicide, work, crime, sloth, or rebellion. … Whence it follows that each person is right to what he does’ (Cioran, cited in Wicks, 1998, p. 116)[1].  I can do anything I desire and it makes no difference.  Any thought, any whim, can be acted on or not.  It does not even matter if the thought did not occur.  At the end of the day it will be as if nothing happened.  If I murder or save lives, it does not matter because all lives are as insignificant as mine.  My words on this page are mere scribbles and the thoughts behind them, empty.  How can I ascribe meaning to something as insignificant as me?

 

3.0 Meaning and Expression

Why can’t we stay closed up inside ourselves?  Why do we chase after expression and form, trying to deliver ourselves of our precious contents or “meanings,” desperately attempting to organise what is after all a rebellious and chaotic process? (Cioran, 1992, p 3)

 

These are Cioran’s initial words in On the Heights of Despair.  Cioran looks at humanity and asks why we feel the need to create order.  We build both physically and mentally.  We are architects who strive to create structures and systems out of chaos.  We logically derive the Truth about our world and search for The Absolute Truth, and a Grand Unifying Theory.  We write about our experiences, objectifying and deifying them.  Yet everything is meaningless.  Hence, it follows that it is meaningless to even attempt to be meaningful.  And yet again, if there is no ‘meaning of life,’ why do we strive, in futility, to try to find it?

Cioran does not directly answer this question.  In posing the question he implies that he is questioning his own reasons for writing On the Heights of Despair.  Despite the futility of writing, Cioran still goes ahead and writes[2].  Cioran suggests that this is the drive of ‘being lyrical.’  ‘To be lyrical means you cannot stay locked up inside yourself’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 4).  Cioran argues that when the intensity of life becomes so overwhelming that it can no longer be endured, we escape through confession.  We live so intensely that we sometimes feel that we will ‘die of life’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 3).  This intense subjectivity that we feel is dispersed through expression, and in the process of this expression a part of ourself dies too.  Expression is the orgasm, the petit mal of life.  So, in a very real sense writing is therapy.  It exorcises our demons before they overwhelm us.  Cioran claims that this explains why ‘almost everybody writes poetry when in love’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 5), and why many people become lyrical on their deathbed.  Cioran thinks that this ‘proves that the resources of conceptual thinking are too poor to express their [our] inner infinity’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 5).  In other words, rationality cannot fully express our emotions.

In the chapter entitled ‘The Passion for the Absurd,’ Cioran poses the question: ‘what would happen if a man’s face could adequately express his suffering, if his entire inner agony were objectified in his facial expression?’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 11).  Cioran thinks that we would hide our face in horror.  That we would be unable to look ourself in the mirror, or face other people.  The absoluteness of our suffering is too much for anyone to see in its entirety.  But this scenario expresses the weakness of any attempt to be lyrical.  If our expressions of lyricism truly expressed our suffering, if our entire agony was objectified in our words, then we would cease to write.  We would burn our books and throw away our pens.  Expressions of lyricism are just as ineffectual as conceptual thinking to adequately express our inner infinity and suffering.  All forms of expression are insufficient to truly express our deepest subjectivity.  Just as system builders delude themselves into thinking that their creation reflects some Truth, so to do poets delude themselves.  Expressions of lyricism are at best a poor imitation of the self.  Even the best poetry leaves us with the impression of incompleteness.  We cannot use organised behaviours to express something that is fundamentally irrational.  Only a madman is true to himself when he flails at random[3].  To be truly true to ourself, we should not attempt expression.  Any attempt is necessarily rational.  How can we save ourselves from rationality?  Through writing Cioran exorcised his demons, but in doing so he condemned himself to sanity.

 

4.0 Absolute Subjectivity

Haven’t people learnt yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?  Why don’t we want to acknowledge the exclusive value of live truths, of truths born in us and revealing a reality proper only to us? [emphasis added] (Cioran, 1992, pp. 22, 23)

 

Throughout On the Heights of Despair Cioran emphasised the value of feelings over intellect.  In stark contradiction to objective meaninglessness, Cioran introduced the idea of ‘live truths’ and value ‘which bursts forth from inspiration’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 39).  Despite our objective meaninglessness, Cioran maintained that we could immerse ourselves in the intense subjectivity of life.  Subjectivity gives us illogical meaning where objectivity gives us logical meaninglessness.  Cioran used imagery to represent the completeness and depth of the sensations experienced in this subjective state.  In the chapter entitled ‘Weariness and Agony’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 16) he compares the sensations to melting.  He suggests the feeling is like ‘dissolving into a flowing river, in which the self is annulled by organic liquidization.’  In ‘Absolute Lyricism’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 57) the analogy is of exploding and crumbling into dust.  Cioran wants his disintegration to be a ‘masterpiece’ and again suggests a feeling of melting.  He writes of the feeling of utter confusion and how this feeling turns a philosopher into a poet.  In ‘Despair and the Grotesque’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 19) he wants to die by throwing himself into an infinite void.  In ‘The Passion for the Absurd’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 12) Cioran has ‘voluptuous awe’ for ‘a volcano of blood, eruptions as red as fire and as burning as despair’.  In ‘The World and I’ (Cioran, 1992, p. 15) Cioran advocated purification through agony induced by whip, fire, or injections.  He wanted to set fire to the world to purge the world of mediocrity.  On the Heights of Despair is full of passages advocating the madness of ecstasy (Cioran, 1992, p. 36), the desire for chaos (Cioran, 1992, p. 52), the abandonment to becoming (Cioran, 1992, p. 25), the happiness of madness (Cioran, 1992, p. 21), and intense subjectivity (Cioran, 1992, p. 74).  All of these expressions and analogies attempt to explain the absoluteness of the feelings.  We are so overcome with the sensations that we lose ourselves in it.  We lose our sense of self, of individuality, in the maelstrom of emotion and passion.  It is like a drug we desire and despise.  It overwhelms us completely, but not completely enough to purge us of our longing for it.  We resort to poetry to explain it, but all explanations are insufficient.  Yet anyone who has experienced it, understands.  It is a universal – an emptiness and a fullness that defies explanation.

Science denies the validity of these subjective experiences. It prefers an objectivity that gives us structure and stability.  This certainty cannot be achieved through subjectivity.  It is better to view the world as it is, calmly and rationally, without resorting to emotion and feeling.  We do not need the subjectivity of inner thoughts, feelings and emotions to explain the world.  I can just imagine the behaviourist B. F. Skinner recoiling in horror if he ever read the heresy of Cioran’s words.  It is a pity that the Cioran who wrote On the Heights of Despair did not live in our time.  A dose of Prozac would have done wonders for him.  Perhaps a few sleeping tablets would have allowed him to sleep off his unnatural obsessions.  Our rationalistic world refutes Cioran’s subjectivism.  It creates a religion of science to condemn any suggestion of subjective truth.  To be so aware of your own suffering is to be deluded.  The world is a happy place of cause and effect where psychologists can cure you of all your suffering.  It is unfortunate that Cioran realised the heroism of his stance.  He deserved the bliss of the naive and innocent.

 

5.0 Death

Death is not something from the outside, ontologically different from life, because there is no death independent of life.  To step into death does not mean, as commonly believed, especially by Christians, to draw one’s last breath and to pass into a region qualitatively different from life.  It means, rather, to discover in the course of life the way towards life and to find in life’s vital signs the immanent abyss of death. … Healthy, normal, mediocre people cannot experience either agony or death.  They live as if life had a definite character. … That is why they perceive death as coming from the outside, not as an inner fatality of life itself.  One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death’s prisoner [emphasis added] (Cioran, 1992, p. 23).

 

Superior and mediocre[4] people alike try to get their head around death.  Cioran thinks that mediocre people accept life as a given, then try to explain death as a separate issue.  It is the superior person who intimately links life and death together.  Reductionism pulls life and death apart to see how they work.  Why do we dissect the golden goose when the gold eggs buy us food for the table?  In a bid for freedom and knowledge we push apart Rangi and Papa and wonder why everything turns cold.  So what is wrong with the cold?

Kluback (1997) is fascinated by Cioran’s comment that ‘life is death’s prisoner’.  He wonders if we should also be able to reverse the proposition as well.  He thinks that if we say that death is life’s prisoner we can suggest that one day the prisoner will overthrow the guard and destroy him.  It is inevitable that death will catch life off guard, strangling and destroying him and emerging victorious.  To create another analogy, we could say that life is a fugitive on the run from the lawman called death.  Life’s crime is that he exists, and death strives to box him in.  When life knows about death his movements are restricted.  Death thus imposes restrictions and limits the freedom of life until he has nowhere left to run.  Analogies are fun, but do they give us anything?

 

6.0 Conclusions

There are no such things as conclusions.  Despite our best effort for cessation and closure, nothing stops and nothing closes.  The linearity of writing and speech delude us.  But thoughts continue round and round.  Did I adequately express Cioran?  Of course not.  I thought and wrote and rationalised.  But in a world of no absolutes the only effective argument is the irrational one.  I find no meaning in the objective world of rationality.  At each abstraction, at each turn towards a more generalised truth, the previous absolute becomes relative, and the world becomes empty.  All truths are only true in a context.  But I need truth, I need expression and meaning.  As a human I have a desire to externalise.  I need to preach, I need to say to the world ‘this is true.’  So I turn to the most absolute truth I can find – my own inner subjectivity.  I dive into the absoluteness of my passion.  I revel in its overpowering completeness and marvel at its power.  I cry out in ecstasy and demand that the rest of the world cry out in unison.  I tell the world that life is suffering and masochistically live.  I then turn to death.  In seriousness, I examine the only absolute truth in life.  Should I deify it or deny it?  Which is more absolute, one or the other, both, or neither?  Is it wrong to create an attachment to life?  If I commit suicide is it creating an attachment to death?  But death is nothingness, how can I create an attachment to something as empty as nothing?  I live, and do not know why.  I die, and no longer ask.

 

Bibliography

Cioran, E. M. (1992). On the heights of despair (I Zarifopol-Johnston trans.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. (Original work published 1934).

 

Kluback, W., & Finkenthal, M. (1997). The temptations of Emile Cioran. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

 

Wicks, R. (1998). 20^th century French philosophy: Bergson to Baudrillard. Auckland: University of Auckland.